A Mother's Secrets

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  And while his would be a brand-new normal, hers would be the normal she knew.

  He could touch her stomach. He could even hug her goodbye fairly regularly. But he absolutely could not talk about any kind of future that included her postbirth. There were times when he caught her looking wistfully at her own stomach. When she asked about his house search and worried that he wouldn’t get in in time for the baby to have a nursery. Times when he knew she was hurting. But she played her part without fail.

  She’d let him in once. It was clear she wouldn’t do so again.

  Christine Elliott was a strong woman. She knew what she knew. Believed what life had taught her. And was true to herself.

  He’d never met anyone who really believed, to their core, that they could, and should, go it alone. Nor one who would be so incredibly great at more. So ultimately happy.

  How he knew that, he didn’t question.

  He just knew that Ryder was the key to helping her find the happiness she deserved. The key to unlocking her heart so that she could let herself be loved. By him or not. At that point, it didn’t even matter who she loved, only that she knew she could. She’d never believe she wasn’t alone when alone was all she knew. All she felt.

  He had to find her son.

  Desperation had a way of pushing a guy forward even when the order was too tall, it seemed. That was the only reason he could give himself for the fact that three and a half weeks after he’d felt bone-deep burning passion for the first time in his life, Jamie was in Los Angeles, waiting to be shown into the office of a man he’d never met.

  Playing scenarios through his mind. Did he introduce himself as the father of the baby his daughter was carrying?

  In some scenarios that seemed the most powerful way to go. And in others, it was far too messy. For all he knew her father wasn’t happy about her choice, would resent Jamie, which would make the trip another lost cause.

  A hugely disappointing one. He was out of ideas.

  “Dr. Howe? Mr. Elliott will see you now.”

  The financial manager, dressed impeccably in a gray suit with white shirt and sedate silk tie, stood from behind his desk as Jamie, feeling decidedly underdressed in the brown pants, beige short-sleeved shirt and tie he’d worn to class in Mission Viejo that day, entered the room with a confidence that wilted with every step.

  He didn’t let it show, though. He’d learned from the best over the past few months how to be who you had to be, regardless of the personal toll.

  “I understand you insisted on speaking with me personally,” Dennis Elliott said. He had graying short hair, but his dark eyes were exactly like his daughter’s. He didn’t hold out a hand. Jamie didn’t offer one. Nor did he sit down. And Jamie followed suit.

  “Yes, sir. I...”

  “I think I can save us both some time here. While the firm is always happy to take on new clients, my book is completely full. I can, however, give you a personal reference to the broker who’s been with me the longest. I’m happy to show you his portfolio, that which isn’t confidential, to give you an idea of his accomplishments and capabilities.”

  Jamie wasn’t the least bit deterred. If anything he’d gained strength with every word the man said. How dare he leave his little girl’s heart to just suffocate and die?

  The anger that assailed him came as much of a surprise as had the passion in his SUV weeks ago. And the jitters that had assailed him at his first meeting with Christine more than five months before. Maybe he’d always been a calm man because he’d never loved as fiercely as Christine had loved others all of her life.

  “I’m not here to make either of us money,” he said. Dennis Elliott could very well be a wonderful husband and father, a great man, but, standing there, Jamie resented the hell out of the man who’d chosen making money over being there for his daughter. Who’d assuaged his own grief rather than helping his daughter pick up the pieces of her shattered life.

  Again and again.

  “I’m a...friend...of your daughter’s.” Not rehearsed rhetoric. He had no idea if Elliott would pick up his phone the second Jamie left the room and get his daughter on the phone. If he was, in essence, putting the nails on his own coffin.

  He only knew that, even if he was, he had to do it. He had to show Christine that someone would move mountains to try and be there for her.

  And with that thought, the way became completely, calmly, clear to him. “In fact, sir, I am in love with her. Completely.”

  The man sat. “Christine’s in love?”

  Was there relief mixed in with the incredulity in the man’s tone? Jamie couldn’t take the time to find out. Or allow the distraction.

  “I want to marry her,” he said, as though the idea had been consciously in his mind when he’d walked in that door.

  He hadn’t even thought about marriage. Maybe he should have. Emily would be shaking her head with that grin of hers and teasing him about his emotional denseness.

  The thought of his wife didn’t bring shame. Strangely, the memory of that grin comforted him.

  “I don’t know a thing about you, but if you managed to get past Christine’s independence, then you have my full support,” Dennis said. “I can’t tell you how...”

  “Sir, if I may...” Jamie interrupted, his tone filled with the confidence of the man in charge of a class filled with exceptionally smart people. “I’ve come seeking your help. You mention Christine’s independence, but it’s more than that. Her independence masks pain that was too much for her to bear. I think it stems from losing her mother and son.”

  He sounded like some kind of therapist. Funny, how smart love made you when you cared enough to see.

  “But...she hasn’t mentioned me to you at all, I take it?” Dennis asked.

  “No, she has not.”

  Had she mentioned the pregnancy? Surely her father knew...

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Several months ago. Christine’s like that. We’d love to see her more, but we generally have to settle for once or twice a year.”

  Good to know. He was betting the man didn’t even know his daughter was pregnant again. Which made him all that much more determined to be successful in his quest. At whatever cost to Dennis Elliott. Or himself, for that matter.

  “I believe Christine loves me, but she won’t listen to her heart,” Jamie said. “All that’s ever done has brought her pain. Hurt her. And she won’t let herself need anyone. Or believe that anyone can be there for her.”

  When the man nodded, eyeing him with fingers steepled at his lips, Jamie continued.

  “I need to find her son, sir.” Jamie held up a hand when the man opened his mouth. “I understand that the adoption was closed. I also understand you handled all of the details. I’m not asking for the impossible here.” Okay, maybe he was. So be it. “I understand that you might not know who the parents are, and even if you do, you have no way of forcing whoever adopted her son to allow her to see him. I’m just asking you for any information you can give me, the name of the agency through which we could request someone contact the parents. We don’t need a picture. Or to know where he is. We don’t even need a name. If I could just let her know that he’s okay. That he’s loved and happy...”

  He was a man in love. Fighting for the woman he loved. Not for himself. But for her.

  Even if she hated him for doing what he was doing, if he could give her back even a hope of opening her life to love again—any kind of love. Partner. Parent...

  “Her whole life, her family, is that clinic—where she makes sure, every day, that no biological parent, or child, under her jurisdiction, and in conjunction with the law, is ever prevented from knowing of one another. Her whole life, sir. She gets up every day to make sure that in her little part of the world, no one suffers as she does. Every day.”

  Dennis Elli
ott stood. Sat on the corner of his desk.

  “What do you do?” he asked, studying Jamie. “For a living?”

  Jamie might have been more put off by the question, in response to his plea, if he hadn’t spent the past several months with Christine. In at least one way she appeared to have learned from her father to avoid internal emotional warfare by changing the subject to something innocuous. He knew the drill.

  “I’m a college professor. Mathematics.” Sweating, Jamie was inordinately thankful he’d opted not to mention that he was also the father of Christine’s surrogate child. Or even that she was carrying a child.

  “Where do you teach?” Jamie named the university branch in Mission Viejo and the college in Marie Cove.

  Dennis nodded. “You’re local a lot of the time, then.”

  “I am.”

  “You own a home?”

  “I did. I sold it.” And then he added, “I’m making an offer on the little cottage on the beach I’m renting until I find something. It’ll be nice to have for romantic weekends, or summer days at the beach. And for out-of-town guests.”

  He hadn’t even told Christine his plan, and he was telling her father?

  “She’d love that. But, you know, she’ll never leave that house she’s in.”

  He nodded. “I think part of my problem finding a house is that none of them measure up to that one. I’ve never been in a building that feels so much like home.”

  “So she hasn’t asked you to live with her?”

  He didn’t answer. But his gaze didn’t back down at all.

  “She doesn’t know I’m here, sir, and might never speak to me again when she finds out.” A bit of an exaggeration. He hoped. Though, technically, she didn’t need to say anything to him during doctor’s appointments and the birth.

  Dennis wiped a hand slowly down his face. Glanced at a picture on his desk. Jamie could only see an angled back of the frame. Wondered if Christine was in it. Or if it was just his current wife and son.

  “I can’t promise anything. I’ll have to make a call. But I know who adopted Chris’s baby.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chris wasn’t all that happy about going with Jamie to Anaheim, over an hour’s drive from Marie Cove, one Saturday in her sixth month of pregnancy. She’d put him off the first time he’d asked her to accompany him to see the same group of students who’d performed in Mission Viejo be guest artists on the main stage at Disneyland. But when he’d asked a second time, saying he wanted to support his students, but really didn’t want to show up to the busy park alone and then added that it would be good for the baby to hear his voice in a crowd of voices, she reluctantly gave in.

  She wore yoga pants, a long, colorful, tight-fitting tunic top and tennis shoes without socks and was kind of looking forward to the day as she climbed into Jamie’s SUV and strapped herself into that so comfortable seat.

  But she dialed her enthusiasm down the second he smiled at her. In jeans and a T-shirt, with his dark hair curling at the collar, he definitely needed to be some woman’s husband. Her stomach warmed, her heart pounded harder and she knew the fear was her mind’s way of telling her to be careful. To guard herself. It wasn’t like she’d be getting much out of the theme park anyway. They weren’t staying long and she couldn’t do many of the attractions due to her condition.

  And the last time she and Jamie had taken a trip out of Marie Cove—the only other time they’d been in a vehicle together—had nearly ended their relationship.

  It had thrown her life in a quandary that she didn’t care to repeat.

  “I talked to my mom today,” Jamie said as he set the cruise control for highway driving. “She’s planning to stay a month after Will’s born.”

  “That gives you three months to find a house or you’ll be sleeping on a very big couch in a very little room.” His little rental had two bedrooms, but from what he’d said, one was nearly full with baby stuff already.

  Not her business.

  “I bought the cottage.”

  Turning to look at him, determining that he wasn’t kidding, she didn’t try to hide her shock. “Why? That place isn’t big enough to raise a child. Besides, it’s too close to the water. A toddler learns how to open doors anywhere from eighteen months to two years, depending on his height and it only takes a second with your head turned...”

  When she heard the vehemence in a statement she had no business making, she cut herself off. Stared straight ahead.

  And realized her hand was cradling her baby bump. She snatched it away. But it was her stomach and where else was she going to put her hand? She tried the door handle. Around her belly to her thigh. The edge of the seat beside her thigh. And back to her belly.

  Then, at Jamie’s silence, turned to see him alternately watching her and the road. Back and forth.

  She wasn’t saying another word.

  “I’m hoping to be in a new house by the time Mom comes,” he said. “And she can use the cottage. It can be a weekend fun spot, you know, for days at the beach. And a place for Mom to stay. My house won’t ever be big enough for me to have her watching over my shoulder like she’s done ever since my father died.”

  “I’m sure it’s just because she loves you and knows the pain of loss...”

  He glanced at her again, and she swore she wouldn’t take her gaze off the road in front of them for the rest of the day. “I’m sure you’re right,” was all he said.

  His mother had lost her husband. Her father had lost his wife. Each parent had a child, about the same age, at home.

  She hadn’t ever put the facts together quite like that. Realizing that she and Jamie had something kind of deep in common. He’d had Emily’s parents watching out for him. She’d had Gram and Gramps. Both of their single parents had remarried, but there’d been one major difference. Jamie’s mother had kept him with them.

  Thinking of which brought back to mind her father’s odd phone call a few days before. Him calling every month or so to check in, if she hadn’t called him or Tammy, was normal enough. But before he’d hung up, he’d told her he loved her. Out of the blue, just said the words.

  She hadn’t known what to do with them. Had pretended she hadn’t heard. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d expressed any deep emotion around her, and he chose then, when she was hormonal and not herself?

  Not that he’d know that. She’d purposely chosen not to tell him about her surrogacy. Just hadn’t wanted to go there. It meant she was going to have to make up some kind of excuse to miss Christmas dinner, but she could always say she was volunteering over the holiday. He’d believe that.

  Jamie streamed music most of the way, mellow country mostly, and she put her seat back and napped a little bit. She didn’t remember being as tired when she’d been pregnant before, but it wasn’t like she’d spent a lot of time hanging on to, or cataloging those memories.

  They got stuck in some traffic heading off the freeway and into Anaheim. He kept watching the clock to the point that she said, “We’re going to be fine, Jamie. It’s still an hour before they’re due to go on. We’ve already got our tickets so we’ll be able to go right in...”

  “It’s like getting on a plane now,” he said, more tense then she’d ever seen him. “You have to go through security and have bags checked.”

  “We’ve still got plenty of time. Even if we have to park far out in the lot, they have shuttles still, I’m sure... And even if we’re a minute or two late, it’s not like they’re going to know. I’m sure that it will mean the world to them just to see you there afterward...”

  His impatience was almost comical—except that it wasn’t kind to take pleasure in another’s discomfort. He didn’t swear, or suddenly start to drive erratically, but he definitely wasn’t her Jamie.

  No.

  Not her Jamie. Just the Jamie she was usually with
. And really, what did she know? They saw each other a few minutes or a little more, a few times a week. And at the doctor’s office, where she was merely a conduit, and he and the doctor were the people with roles to play.

  As she’d known would be the case, they were inside the park, heading from the locker area up front, past the first couple of stores—or that last chance to buy souvenirs if you were on your way out—toward Main Street, with almost half an hour to spare.

  Excitement lit inside her, on a small scale, as she looked around at the fantasy town where everything was colorful and beautiful and perfect looking. “It looks pretty much like I remember it,” she said, smiling at Jamie, who was keeping close beside her. “How can that be?”

  The place was crowded, of course, and he seemed more intent on watching out for her than giving any hint of enjoying his surroundings.

  Like, at any moment, someone might bump into her stomach and hurt her.

  Or the baby. It was about him, not her, she reminded herself.

  He knew right where the main stage was and didn’t let her veer off course even long enough to take a peek at a couple of Disney characters dressed up for photo ops.

  “I have a picture someplace of me and Mom and Dad here,” she told him. She’d forgotten that she had it. Figured it was probably in the photo trunk in the attic. She was going to look when she got home. Get it out.

  Those were the types of photos that she should frame and put on the hallway walls upstairs—after she got them repainted.

  She figured they’d find a seat in the back of the arena, leaving lower seats for guests there to see the whole show, but Jamie led them straight to the front row.

  “We’re going to block the view of those kids.” She leaned over to whisper, getting a whiff of his musky cologne in the process. The scent that seduced her that night in his SUV. She pointed to the bleacher two up behind them.

  With a nod, he scooted a couple of feet. But stayed right there in front. Like he thought his students would be looking for him and he wanted to make certain they saw him easily. She hadn’t realized how close he was with them. They’d really seemed kind of formal with him when they’d been to their last show.